21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Feigned Surprise
he best developers I’ve worked with were willing to admit when they didn’t know something. Of course they could learn quickly. If you meet an arrogant developer who pretends to know everything, be careful. To them, their ego is more important than your software. An insecure person who mixes up their self-worth with their programming ability can be very unpleasant to work with. Sadly, some workplaces and development teams reward bombastic claims made with absolute certainty, even on comple...Folksonomies: conduct professionalism
Folksonomies: conduct professionalism
1 Being surprised that someone doesn't know something is denigrating and demonstrates that you don't know your field.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Post-Modernism in Ancient Thought
In the midst of the decline of Greece, Athens, which, in the days of its power, had honoured philosophy and letters, owed to them, in its turn, the preserving for a longer period some remains of its ancient splendour. In its tribune, indeed, the destinies of Greece and Asia were no longer decided; it was, however, in the schools of Athens that the Romans acquired the secrets of eloquence; and it was at the feet of Demosthenes’ lamp that the first of their orators was formed.
The academy, t... 1 
notes
notesWith the idea that nothing is knowable, philosophy fell into a rut. Aristotle came along with the brilliant idea that everything we know comes through our senses, but failed to take that idea anywhere useful.
07 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Scientists Must Always Stand at the Drawing Board
Do I believe in UFOs or extraterrestrial visitors?
Where shall I begin? There's a fascinating frailty of the human mind that psychologists know all about, called "argument from ignorance." This is how it goes. Remember what the "U" stands for in "UFO"? You see lights flashing in the sky. You've never seen anything like this before and don't understand what it is. You say, "It's a UFO!" The "U" stands for "unidentified."
But then you say, "I don't know what it is; it must be aliens from ou... 1 notes
notesReady to revise hyptheses and embrace uncertainty.
19 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
What Makes Something a Distinct Object?
Let me look at the envelope from a very basic point of view,
that of the neurophysiology of raw perception itself. Forgive me
if it’s a bit oversimple. Take me-on the back of your retina
I’m upside down, focused at the center but fuzzy at the edges,
two-dimensional, a barrage of photons releasing rhodopsin and
triggering neural impulses along the visual nerve. At the same
time, the pressure wave I’m setting up right now with all this talk
is causing little hairs inside the cochlea, in y...Folksonomies: perception
Folksonomies: perception
1 notes
notesOur perceptions are built on photons hitting our retinas and pressure variations tickling the folicles in our cochleas... so how does all that become something distinct in our mind's eye?
04 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Absolute Certainty Will Always Elude Us
There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on surprises. Yet some New Age and religious writers assert that scientists believe that 'what they find is all there is'. Scientists may reject mystic revelations for which there is no evidence except somebody's say-so, but they hardly believe their knowledg...Science has a built-in error-detection mechanism.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Doubt as a Scientific Virtue
I would now like to turn to a third value that science has. It is a little more indirect, but not much. The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn't now the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he as a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount impor...Folksonomies: science scientific virtues
Folksonomies: science scientific virtues
1 notes
notesThe importance of doubt, and a lack of absolute certainty, in science, which is non-authoritarian.
